Open*Education: 2011 in review There is something about a new year that always seems so promising and energizing. It doesn’t seem like too long ago we were saying thank heavens for 2011, and now it’s time to bring in 2012. Before we close this chapter, let’s take a quick look at the ten most popular articles in the education community for 2011, starting with number ten and counting down. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. One of my personal favorite memories from 2011 was meeting the professors who participated in POSSE 2011 in Raleigh. As we head into 2012, please let me know if you have ideas or feedback for this education community. Best wishes in 2012!
Digital Textbook Initiative About Us Additional Options "From government to non-profit organizations, teachers to textbook publishers, we all have a role to play in leveraging 21st century technology to expand learning and better serve California's students, parents, teachers and schools. This initiative will ensure our schools know which digital textbooks stand up to California's academic content standards - so these cost-effective resources can be used in our schools to help ensure each and every student has access to a world-class education." - Governor Schwarzenegger Download the draft Phase Three Report Download the Phase Two Report Download the Phase One Report Electronic Instructional Materials and the Williams Settlement's Sufficiency Requirements Review results from all three phases of the Digital Textbook Initiative are listed separately below. CLRN is aware that some of the publisher provided website links to the CLRN reviewed textbooks are not current.
Open Textbooks Statement to Make Textbooks Affordable Make Textbooks Affordable, a campaign composed of Student Associations and Public Interest Research Groups from across the US, yesterday released a statement in support of open textbooks signed by 1000 academics. From the press release: Open textbooks are complete, reviewed textbooks written by academics that can be used online at no cost and printed for a small cost. What sets them apart from conventional textbooks is their open license, which allows instructors and students flexibility to use, customize and print the textbook. Open textbooks are already used at some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions – including Harvard, Caltech and Yale – and the nation’s largest institutions – including the California community colleges and the Arizona State University system. On the What are Open Textbooks? Nevertheless its fantastic to see growing support for open textbooks!
On open educational resources -- Beyond definitions Image by opensource.com Despite the attempts at single sentence definitions so common in the published literature, “open educational resources” is a highly context-mediated construct. However, because philanthropic and public funding agencies commonly require grant outputs to be open educational resources, the ability to quickly and clearly categorize a variety of creative works as “open educational resources” or “not open educational resources” has become critical. Many funding agencies and programs that require OER simply require grantees to apply a Creative Commons license to their grant outputs (e.g., the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the U. From a grant or contract compliance standpoint, the operational definition of open educational resources is often collapsed to: Open educational resource, (n). “In the public domain” means that, while the nature of the artifact qualifies it for copyright protection, the artifact is not subject to copyright restrictions. The Ideal OER 1.
Glencoe Biology 2012 leads the way with the best ideas in Biology education. It can help all of your students succeed with its organization around major Themes, Big Ideas, and Main Ideas of biology and its strong support for reading comprehension. This program’s comprehensive content is made relevant to students through engaging real-world contexts. A vast array of lab experiences builds strong inquiry skills. The abundance of differentiated instructional strategies helps teachers reach all learners. Seamlessly integrated technology allows teachers to save time and increase productivity! For more information visit www.MHEScience.com . Program Components Choose your state » Price Disclaimer Items with a ‡ before the title are only available for educators. All prices on this site are for U.S. customers only. National Components: Design programs the way you want, meet your student's needs and learning goals, and address programs affordability.
350,000 Textbooks Downloaded From Apple's iBooks in Three Days - John Paczkowski Though nascent and unproven, Apple’s new textbook initiative appears to be gaining lots of momentum — and quickly, too. Within days of its debut, Apple’s iBooks textbook store had already racked up a significant number of downloads. Same thing with the company’s textbook authoring tool. According to Global Equities Research, which monitors Apple’s iBook sales via a proprietary tracking system it doesn’t much care to discuss, more than 350,000 textbooks were downloaded from the company’s iBooks Store within the first three days of availability (caveat: a number of these may well have been free copies of E.O. And there were some 90,000 downloads of iBooks Author, Apple’s free textbook-creation tool, during the same time. If those numbers are accurate, Apple’s textbook effort would seem to be off to a good start. According to Global Equities Research, the supply chain markup on textbooks ranges between 33 percent and 35 percent.
Practical OSS Exploration - Introduction to Free and Open Source Software - Teaching Open Source By Greg DeKoenigsberg Introduction Free and Open Source Software, or FOSS for short, is software for which the source code can be freely shared, with anyone, for any purpose. There are more rigorous definitions, and there are many licenses that help to ensure these freedoms in subtly different ways. At the end of this chapter, you should: Understand the difference between source code and binary code; Understand some of the benefits of using FOSS; Understand some of the benefits of participating in FOSS projects; Have an idea of some FOSS projects that might interest you, and why; Have the beginning of your own FOSS portfolio. Why does FOSS matter to me? Free and Open Source Software matters because it's real, and because you, the student, can see in to the guts of it. Without FOSS, getting experience in real software projects requires access, and probably permission, to see the source code. In the world of FOSS, the source code is available to anyone who wants to see it. Source Control .
physics3 Extras Who's Using the Books Adoptions of Light and Matter Colleges and Universities High Schools Parker School, Kamuela, HI (Matt Hamilton) Little Axe High School, Norman, Oklahoma (Michael Dean) Orion International Academy, Pasadena, CA (John Gaines's Introduction to Physics) Ballinger High School, Ballinger, TX (Mr. Adoptions of Mechanics University of British Columbia (Profs. Pine Tree High School, Longview, Texas (Blake Sansom's AP Physics C) Ballinger High School, Ballinger, TX (Mr. Adoptions of Simple Nature Regis College (Prof. Adoptions of Special Relativity University of Peradeniya (Prof. Adoptions of Conceptual Physics University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash (Prof. Adoptions of Discover Physics Ohlone College (Otis Walton's Physics 108) Harmony Academies St. Adoptions of Fundamentals of Calculus Bellingham Technical College (Anita Peng's Math 148) Within each section above, schools are listed in reverse chronological order of adoption. Alignment with California Standards
L’accès gratuit en ligne Lelivrescolaire.fr est un projet avant tout porté par des enseignants passionnés. En lançant un nouveau concept de manuels scolaires, il nous apparaissait évident que l’accès à ces manuels devait être libre pour tous. Proposer un accès gratuit en ligne à ces manuels scolaires, c’est aider les enseignants dans leur quotidien (préparation des cours, projection en classe, etc.) mais aussi contribuer, à notre échelle, à l’égalité des chances et à la réussite de tous les élèves. C’est également être fidèles à l’esprit du travail collaboratif de notre communauté d’enseignants, qui s’inscrit par nature dans une philosophie d’ouverture et de partage.
"Access alone is not enough" Josh Jarrett, Deputy Director of Postsecondary Success at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Image credits: Open Education Conference Josh Jarrett, Deputy Director of Postsecondary Success at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered today's keynote at the Open Education Conference with a simple message (but no simple answer): Access alone is not enough to help people realize their dreams. The Gates Foundation focuses on education because it is still the "primary arbiter of opportunity in this country," he continued. Jarrett offered four challenges for improving education over the next decade: Completion challenge We've done a remarkable job helping more students go to higher education in this country," Jarrett said. But institutions aren't ready to serve this new definition of traditional, nor quite ready to meet many of the other challenges. "How can openness free the giant?" First, he applauded what the OER community has done right, beginning with developing frameworks and rules to support OER. He then offered three more challenges, specific to the OER community:
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Open education resources: Moving from sharing to adopting Image by opensource.com Educators have been sharing open educational resources (OERs) for over 12 years now. There are literally tens of thousands of them out there, many structured as collections of course materials known as open courseware (OCW), some structured as complete open courses, some structured as complete open textbooks, and many not really structured at all. The “sharing ball” is rolling. There are more materials that need to be shared, but the eventual sharing of these materials has now become inevitable. What is anything but inevitable is the adoption of any of these open educational resources. While the mainstream of education will finally begin sharing OERs this decade, those leaders who think of themselves as being on the cutting edge of the open education movement need to start walking the walk / becoming living examples / modeling the desired behavior of adopting others’ OERs. For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift?